Beijing
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As US President Donald Trump takes a sledgehammer to longstanding alliances with a volatile foreign policy that’s included threats to take control of Greenland and a spiraling feud with Canada, he’s also creating a significant opening for China.
Look no further than the revolving door of Western leaders hosted by Xi Jinping in recent weeks aiming to reset relations or deepen cooperation with the world’s second-largest economy.
That procession includes the leaders of some of the US’ closest traditional allies: Britain’s Keir Starmer and Canada’s Mark Carney last month, as well as NATO ally Finland’s Petteri Orpo. French President Emmanuel Macron made a visit in December, while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is expected soon.
Viewed from Beijing, that list is a powerful sign that an era of talking about economic separation from China is waning, and Western leaders are finally seeing China as a reliable partner – in contrast to the US under President Donald Trump.
Visiting leaders have praised relations with China as key to international stability or their own national security – a far cry from the recently prevailing orthodoxy among G7 leaders that China was a challenge to the rules-based international order.
And in broader conversations taking place across gatherings like the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Western leaders are openly acknowledging that the US-backed post-1945 order is being eclipsed – a view not completely out of step with China’s.
The European Union “has really been bullied by the US and it’s only human nature to seek outside support when you’re being pushed around. That’s why Europe is actually open to the idea of strengthening ties with China,” Jin Canrong, an international relations expert at Renmin University in Beijing, said in a recent analysis.
Chinese foreign policy thinkers are under few illusions that American allies are about to wipe clean a list of ongoing concerns about China – from trade to human rights to security – or mount a sweeping shift to Beijing at the expense of ties with Washington.
But as leader Xi Jinping continues to push to forge a more China-friendly world, Beijing seems well aware of the major potential benefits from the seismic shift underway.
That’s especially true when it comes to ensuring its aims to dominate high-tech – and expand its global trade, clout and military might – meet less resistance.
Already the recent diplomatic parade in the Chinese capital has amounted to an opportunity to repair relations with key Western economies.
Carney in his visit – the first from a Canadian prime minister since 2017 – relaxed stringent tariffs on China-made electric vehicles that Canada had imposed in lockstep with the US in exchange for an easing of barriers on Canadian agricultural goods.
Separately, Beijing and the European Union (EU) last month came to an agreement to replace tariffs on Chinese EVs with commitments to sell at minimum prices – easing a longstanding friction based around Europe’s concern that artificially cheap cars from China, far-and-away the leader of global production, would devastate its domestic auto industry.
Starmer, making the first trip by a British leader in eight years, praised business opportunities in China for the UK, days after his government green-lighted plans for China to build a controversial “mega” embassy close to London’s financial district.
“Realism” is at work in European leaders’ recent diplomacy toward China, according to Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London.
“Mistrust of China remains deep, particularly over Chinese support for Russian war efforts in Ukraine … (but) European states cannot ignore China, particularly when the US is going ‘rogue’ from their perspective.”
European governments in recent years ramped up scrutiny of China’s role in areas from telecoms networks and critical infrastructure to education – and followed US cues to restrict the sale of advanced semiconductor technology over national security concerns.
They’ve also grown increasingly alarmed by China’s gaping trade surplus and are working on ways to protect their industries, some of which analysts say face an existential threat from an influx of heavily subsidized Chinese goods. (Macron, during his December visit to China, said he threatened EU tariffs if the trade surplus isn’t addressed.)
It remains to be seen how willing the EU and its member countries are to downplay these concerns or reorient their policies on China (which the bloc has described as an “economic competitor and a systemic rival”), even in the face of Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff threats and his rattling of NATO.
European leaders including Starmer, who had pushed for tighter UK-China ties prior to Trump’s election, have insisted they don’t have to come at the expense of security.
And the EU appears to be keeping its foot on the pedal. Last month it released a new proposal to phase out components and equipment from “high-risk” suppliers in critical sectors, expected to affect Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, after late last year ramping up screening of foreign investments. Addressing the trade surplus and reducing dependence on China’s critical minerals also remains high on the EU agenda.
Still, voices within China are optimistic.
“Some Western countries, under US leadership, have attempted and advocated collective confrontation against China and decoupling from China,” Wang Wen, a professor at Renmin University in Beijing, wrote in a recent commentary, referring to efforts to separate supply chains from China.
“However, reality has repeatedly proven that the ‘decoupling theory’ and the ‘new Cold War’ are not only unpopular but also difficult to truly implement.”
Other Chinese analysts have suggested that with the US exit from more than two dozen United Nations bodies – and Trump’s effort to set up a parallel “Board of Peace” – Europe will simply need China more as an international counterweight.
“In order to maintain the multilateral system, (Europe) may need to compromise with China on trade and economic issues,” Ye Weimian, a researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong wrote in an analysis, pointing to areas like tariffs, technology access restrictions, and even a stalled China-EU investment agreement.
Nonetheless, Beijing has pushed back against a narrative that it aims to “take advantage” of a rift between the US and its allies. Instead, it frames the warming of relations as proof of the appeal of its own market – and its vision for the world.
“This is an inevitable result of China’s development benefiting the world and continuously injecting stability and certainty into the international community,” an editorial in the state-backed outlet Global Times said last month.
Chinese analysts have also pointed to the US’ own climb-down on frictions with China as part of this recognition. The two sides reached an agreement to de-escalate trade tensions last fall. That was after Beijing played its trump card of stopping the flow of the rare earth minerals, waking up the world to its outsized control over their supply chains.
More importantly for Beijing, the US has moved away from framing China as an ideological challenger, to simply a competitor in an economic and strategic sense.
That shift dovetails with China’s broader vision for the world order: one no longer dominated by what it sees as American values and alliances, where countries aren’t bound to one another in ideological or security blocs, but instead make calculations based on shared economic and strategic interests.
And at a time when European voices are acknowledging that a “new world order” is taking shape, Beijing wants to frame its own vision for that order as one whose time has come.
“It’s less about these countries choosing China,” the Global Times editorial read. “And more about them choosing to follow the trend of the times.”
